Grrl Power #869 – Standard suck deviation
Times Square seems to be a somewhat fluid designation. I thought it was just one intersection with a bunch of light up billboards, but a lot of adjacent areas seem to count themselves as part of it, I guess for greater collective tourism appeal. The team landed a block from the spaceship while Maxima hands out assignments and lets Sydney have her little rant.
This is one of those pages that kept getting rewritten as I was drawing it. It started off as pure exposition, with Sydney asking what they were doing up there, then cutting Max off with her own assumptions before she could answer, but as lenient as Max is, there’s a finite amount that she’ll let subordinates run roughshod over her. Also, it wouldn’t make any sense that Max wouldn’t have told them by now, so Sydney is just venting. Yes, most commanders probably wouldn’t put up with that either, and while Max could be a hardass about it, she’s content to just let Sydney vent for like 50 seconds to get it out of her system.
Ultimately I changed it around a little bit because while sometimes exposition is unavoidable, it’s always bugged me when a character asks another one for some basic ass information that they both already know for the benefit of the audience. “Excuse me, fellow Navy SEAL, can you tell me again about this “gun” device and how it works?”
Hah, look, I remembered the patches on Sydney’s shoulders and her nametag and all that. Anyone want to bet how many pages I keep that up for?
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uh… what happened to the magic veil that should be cloaking all the aliens?
I think the space ships landing in plain sight broke it. The veil was more of the Buffy effect where something that couldn’t possibly be real gets overwritten with a logical explanation.
When a space ship landed and the governments acknowledged it the veil couldn’t cover it up.
Nope, no rewriting required, the author has consistently stuck with his explanation since the outset (see my post below).
Spaceships are just covered up by describing them as weather balloons or the like.
Plus not many folks would want to talk publicly about getting anally probed by aliens.
Are you sure about that? I mean, enough people have talked publicly about that for it to become a trope of alien abduction stories.
Yes.
World population: 7.5 billion.
Number of people publicly confessing anal probing by aliens: 1 pawfull.
Plus Cartman – but he had it coming!
Cartman got it coming & going…
It never has, havn’t you seen any buzzing the cattle near you?
Each species has to be programmed into the Veil separately, and the galaxy has many different ones. So the Veil mostly protects the indigenous Earth non-human races, such as vampires and werewolves.
Previously any aliens, who were of species which did not have a pre-existing contingent on Earth, had to bring their own cloaking devices. It is why Dabbler had to use her own illusion magic (until she thought up a good excuse not to).
Now aliens are public knowledge, so they are free to visit without disguises. But the Veil is still concealing supernaturals, such as werebunnies.
I’d say more that Dabbler found the first excuse not to, rather than a good excuse
It was never designed to stop this many beings that are actively drawing attention to themselves. It broke down over supers, too.
… No it didn’t, Sci-fright deliberately blew the shit out of a few of Pylons, forcing the Twilight Council to divert power from other programs, allowing her to attack the Vault (incidentally allowing SmugD to steal a few items)
The veil was never about aliens.
^I think that’s it. When they met the magical counsel (or whatever they’re called), they were saying that they didn’t /really/ account for supers. I’m guessing no one thought of aliens for the same reason.
Maybe not originally, but there is an ET representative on the Council so the Veil has certainly had some time for minor adaptation to accommodate ETs. As Ingsol pointed out though, the Veil wasn’t designed to compete with 24-hour news and social media, just the ocassional sighting, so it’s blown either way now.
“What happened to the magic veil that should be cloaking all the aliens?” – nope
Variety and speed. The Veil works on a basis of specifying the things that you want to cover, not the things that you allow to remain uncovered, and there are so many different varieties of Offworlders that any automatic system could not be relied upon to pick them all up. If someone like Chorius calls ahead and provides details of what will need to be covered, they can be written in ahead of time. If they just rock up and step out, the cover they would need is not (yet) in place.
I think it says a lot about my wife’s general character and disposition that I find Sydney in that third panel the cutest i’ve seen her so far XD
You are very lucky.
Indeed I am.
I suspect the reason is around 10 times easier than Sydney makes it to be.
If you analyze that a situation has the potential to become a hard to handle crisis you call the people whose job it is to handle hard to handle crises: the army.
If the army analyzes they’ve no idea what kind of crisis it could become they send their most generalized asset Archon.
If Archon wants to act on the field they call Arc-Swat.
Also her logic is a little faulty:
– sure they have better medical tech, but medical tech isn’t necessary to protect those around it’s owner, first it’s to protect you. Anti-biotics can protect me very well against all kind of sicknesses I could catch, but don’t keep me from spreading the sickness if I catch it.
– managing normal people and muggers can better be done by infantery.
Something tells me you’ve forgotten the microbiological containment zone in deathworlders…
I’ve never watched deathworlders
Deathworlders isn’t something you watch. It’s a series of amateur stories written in a shared universe where Earth is a “deathworld” to almost every sentient species in a galaxy full of space faring aliens. Almost all of whom have evolved on low-gravity, virtual utopia planets without any large predators, without any virulent viruses, and where food is as easy to obtain as reaching out your hand to the nearest bush.
To these aliens even a human’s gut bacteria is a deadly threat.
I absolutely love deathworld stories. It’s sort of in the vein of the ‘Humans are Awesome’ trope.
Please no sjw sidney… Or any one else… GWGB
What’s wrong with fighting for social justice?
The people who tend to do it.
“The thing about evolving on a death world is that you don’t really realize you’re doing so until you get the chance to leave it. Up to that point the presence of carnivorous monsters, venomous micropredators, extreme climatic conditions, geological instability, the most lethal cocktail of microbial and viral life forms in the galaxy and of course the crushing gravity, seemed entirely natural.”
For today’s lucky 10,000, here is the wiki for the Deathworlder universe. I strongly suggest the quasi-official reading order, which weaves all the canon storylines together.
The main author’s official Deathworlder’s site has all of his stories available as free ebooks as well, which is much more reader-friendly than the original long-form Reddit everything else is in.
It’s New York, only in fiction are they not getting robbed, whether by criminals or by politicians.
you understand its less likely to get robed in new york then a small town and less likely to get shot then anywhere in Wyoming. there are just more people in new York so the lower crime rate gets over shadowed
Meaning that if you go around flaunting pounds of gold there will be enough people around to notice it and try to get it.
Dunno where you read that nonsense, but nonsense it is, both total and per capita New York is one of the worst crime cities on the planet.
HAPPY 10TH ANNIVERSARY GRRLPOWER!!!!!!
Ooh, well observed!
Thanks for 10 fun years, DaveB! Hard work, and much appreciated.
Alien 232- I am a disappointed in this place. I was lead to believe from captured free media in space that there would be musicals here in the streets.
Alien 38 – Look adverts on walls and buildings for said musicals. Maybe they have moved them inside to allow pedestrian traffic to flow better?
Alien 88 – Yes. No one should impede access to the food trolleys. You have to try these things. Absolutely disgusting meats disguised as a “fodial fruit” covered in sauces and organics. I can’t stop eating them. //sir. how many more of these Hots can we get for that gold?//
Hotdog vendor – “All of them? (calling cousin) Have you tried burritos or pretzels before? I will call another vendor. But it’s a bit more expensive.”
A88- //”We have a plethora of heavy metals to trade…”//
Hotdog vendor “Right O. Hey, Vinnie. Opportunity! I know it’s late, but check the photos I sent yah…GOLD at least 8 ounces. They have more. They want food and entertainment. What? Let me ask. Yo. Green dude. Do you guys need entertainment too?”
A232- //”Yes the musicals, the dancings.”//
Hotdog vendor “Uh what about personal dancings.”
A38 // “Do you mean the matings?”//
Hot Dog vendor “Yeah, sure. That…mostly just wiggling and touching stuff…anything else yah got to negotiate with the ladies..”
A232 // This is agree. Wait. That is ‘yes’. Entertainments of personal nature are welcome. Was a long trip. //
Hotdog Vendor // Okay Vinnie go ahead and bring your “nieces” these guys are cool…and bring the boombox – cops are all gone…they got supers watching the square…so bring the van too…and the foodtruck. We’re gonna make Bank!”
These are not tourists. They are spies for intergalactic weapon brokers. They are surreptitiously searching for the Earth weapons that destroyed the Fel attack, as reported in https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-769-incoming-eventually/
Headcanon accepted. For now.
There’s one guy in a horse-drawn carriage pfft
Some research failure on the aliens’ part was to be expected, I suppose.
I hear you can get a horse drawn carriage tour of certain places in New York city, looks like 1 of them heard about a chance to make some money…
*no need to worry, we’ve been around conventions, my horse will not attempt to eat the multicolored alien thing in front of it*
I know of a western city where the main tourist area had carriage rides during the holiday season. They did away with it entirely about a decade ago after one of the horses died from breathing traffic fumes too long during a traffic jam. D:
Heh. Mind you, I lived in rural Bulgaria for 16 years, and that is spot on (albeit much too snazzy a carriage). One amusing development though, over that time, was seeing a few where they replaced the horse with a 2-stroke engine! Complete with extended controls replacing the reins, so that the driver could continue operating the vehicle in much the same way as before.
Cool story and stuff but what the heck are Heatwave and Anvil doing in panel 1?
I meant Achilles. I thought Achilles and then it came out Anvil.
What the heck are Heatwave and Achilles doing in panel 1?
Posing for the two people taking photos of the Supers and not the aliens.
My telepathic interface does this all the time. Especially when I try to correct the mistake, it tells me there was no mistake but a deep understanding.
Sydney is wearing her hair different, unless that’s a sign she’s maturing or will her ADD (or is it ADHD) prevenr this?
DaveB changed it a couple pages back, well spotted, have a carrot
She’s mastered the French braid from #296
How the hell is it weird of the government to be concerned that extremely powerful unknown entities are showing up all over the place, with little to no oversight and uncertain intentions?
One alien with a desire to squish humans could easily massacre huge numbers without getting caught. One alien with a desire to snag some valuables could empty museums without difficulty. When consequences are unenforceable, bad-actors proliferate. This is actually a remarkably laid-back response to the situation.
We don’t know how powerful they’re. There’s a serious possibility they have just as much power as any European Citizen, because they don’t carry the advanced weaponry of their civilization.
This actually doesn’t disprove your point, because uncertain high power is maybe even more scary.
That having said: if an attack is what you fear is sending the most powerfull weapons in your arsenal not enough?
Still I agree the right reaction is a different one: send infantry and the air force to manage the aliens(like enforcing traffic laws, explaining the geography, help in small conflicts), while Archon is called to not show their asses, but only hide in a base until something goes catastrophically wrong with the possibility to do some missions undercover.
Do not send people you’ve trained, organized, and equipped to win fights, into a situation that’s not a fight. Because they have ingrained responses, no matter how much they try not to, that will, sooner or later, somewhere, turn it into a fight.
It would do more good to send out blended teams of diverse specialists – anthropoligists, biologists, historians, chamber-of-commerce reps, etc… with one or two police officers per team.
‘Course, I don’t know where you’re going to whomp up that many interested oh never mind they’ve discovered youtube.
They ARE inherently dangerous, like everyone else, but due to their alien nature and technology, they pose a threat that the normal police is not prepared to deal with. Arc-swat will have to face people drunk on water, intoxicated by tomatoes, pissing acid in a side alley, parking a mecha suit in the middle of the road, speeding on holographic limbs or trying to enslave a waiter when he asked “how may I serve you”. Or wearing a doomsday device as a fashion statement.
Considering this is a world changing event everybody’s so laid back it’s almost jarring.
People panic at first; then it becomes normal. It’s an accepted part of human biology.
In psychology it’s called the status quo bias or compensation. In pharmacology and biology it’s called regulation, adaptation, or homeostasis. In sociology it’s called normalization. In neurology it’s called neuroplasticity. What these all refer to is some current standard becoming the new baseline.
These terms are used in specific contexts so you’d best not use them in conversation unless you understand their meanings. I was just listing them to show the prevalence of the phenomenon.
Its because the aliens are being overly friendly on a very individual unorganized front. Also they are spending lots of money.
Historically, that almost always led to enslavement and massacres. But believe whatever you want.
The human body really only has the resources to maintain actual panic for about fifteen minutes. You just can’t make adrenaline and maintain that hyperfocus-on-danger for that long.
After that, there’s either terror (terror is different from panic – far less active and far less visible), sheer defenseless exhaustion, or adaptation. Adaptation – acting normal – may give way to another round of panic when the danger is past, or may discover that the danger wasn’t nearly as bad as feared.
Any of these may lead to PTSD in some circumstances, but the ‘defenseless-exhaustion’ state is practically there already.
The most amazing thing is that I’m 100% convinced Dabbler ws 98% dead serious when she said what she said. (She always has at least 2% of everything she says being passed through the ol’ innuendo filter–to apply one, not to remove or thwart one.)
Given that Earth has actually been hosting alien tourists for some time already, just not publicly known, you’d think the aliens would already have a better idea of how much gold is actually worth here.
If I were to go to the US I wouldn’t have an idea how much to give(I know you guys have tipping and don’t always have to include taxes, but I don’t know how much or where) and neither would I for certain in any country that isn’t European(haggling is pretty common outside Europe), these aliens are the first to work without cloaking and since they’re tourists they’re obviously not planning on calculating and recalculating all purchases they do there.
Gold may be no big thing to aliens, with their advanced technology galactic resources. If I was visiting a place where people valued pencils, I’d bring a couple hundred pencils. A taxi ride, a pencil. Stay in a hotel, a pencil. Oh, that’s good for the whole week? Cool. A fancy dinner, a pencil. I don’t have a way to make change, and besides, who cares? Each pencil cost me maybe a dime, am I going to worry that I only needed to pay 1/100th of a cent?
Ok so name tape and service tape – If this is supposed to be in line with other Services, you’ve got the tapes on the wrong sides. Branch over the heart.
“Anyone want to bet how many pages I keep that up for?”
Probably for as long as Sidny can keep her hare like that.
Hrm… so they’re here where stuff is going on, currently benign. So the question is, how long before something pops off now that the primaries are gathered? 10 pages, max.
So, when the Aliens return to their ship and find about 10,000 parking tickets on it….?
Oh it’s not just parking violations – no license, no registration, no wheels, going 3000 mph in a 35 zone…
Somehow, I knew what that clip was going to be before I clicked on it.
Most commanders would probably do exactly what Maxima is doing: Ignore the recruit who is just venting without saying anything too far out of line. They have better things to do, and it’s the NCOs around them would would be shutting Sydney up, unless they were taking their cues from Maxima’s reaction.
Plus Maxima admittedly has a VERY soft spot for certain people, like Kenya and Sydney and Peggy, and probably lets them get away with things other people never would (although Peggy probably doesnt do as much problematic stuff as Kenya or Sydney, if any), since Kenya’s Maxima’s best friend and Maxima seems to look at Sydney almost in a ‘kid sister’ way.
“Maxima seems to look at Sydney almost in a ‘kid sister’ way.”They all seem to do that.
Hope not, some people would like to see their kid sister buried, or worse
And 6 feet under is nowhere near enough ]:(
I highly recommend Six Feet Under; wonderful fish and food. Two different locations in Atlanta (yes my sister runs/owns it with her husband :P) /promo off.
Sorry guys, I just couldn’t resist that rejoinder.
I like the snake guy. Robotic arms and helmet for breathing different atmosphere. Would be funny if there was four or more Robot legs Moving his tail along.
A fun thing about Sydney just venting, is that it actually fits Max’s character. Max recognizes, and has been seen on camera, letting Sydney vent because she realizes Sydney uses that to come up with the right answer…
Unless she gets distracted.
Why is there so much ET tourism so quickly? A few groups, sure. But I’m getting the impression that major cities are getting good sized rush of tourists. Or maybe a lot of governments are sending spies at about the same time?
It’s been around a while, this is just the first time ETs haven’t needed to wear disguises. There’s probably quite a few tourists taking advantage of the confusing transition to check out the “newly-opened” planet while bypassing the official channels, leading to things like accosting civilians and overpaying for services while making a nuisance of themselves.
Something Americans usually are on the other side of. /s
Earth is within easy interstellar travel of Fracture, a Dyson sphere with a population equal to billions of planets. So news that travel restrictions (like needing to carry a cloaking device, use a universal translator and learn local customs) have been lifted will have spurred a proportion of their population to enjoy the new experience.
The only puzzle is why so few have come yet.
Anyone here read any of the MiB novelizations? A number of aliens were sold the Brooklyn Bridge or whatnot. Think every scam ever pulled on an immigrant, and then multiply it by, “If they can get to Earth they have their own personal spacecraft powerful enough to ruin everyone’s day.” If aliens showed up, it would be a good idea to keep them from being victimized before the universe starts calling every human a crook.
it’s funny she would say that when they tried to mug her when she was with Cora back on the space hub lmao